Sky took a deep breath. Aaaaah, Summer! It had been ages since she had been out in the fresh air. Today, when she spotted this garden on her way back from flower gathering, she hadn’t been able to resist the temptation.

You see, Sky was a Faery and unfortunately, Faeries did not have the luxury of roaming the countryside freely like they used to. Times had moved on and humans did not believe in Faeries and magic anymore. What’s more they had taken to cutting down entire forests to make space for their cities. Since the only way into FaerieRealm was through magical knots in certain trees, this seriously undermined Faerie-Human relations. As a result, Faeries had been forced into hiding. It was very occasionally that a Faerie like Sky was allowed out to gather ingredients (like flowers) needed to make faeriedust.

Sky looked around her with interest. The garden had a wooden fence. She felt a twinge of annoyance. Why couldn’t they use bricks for their fences? What a waste of good trees and their wood. On a happier note, the grass in this garden wasn’t as tall as the grass Sky was used to seeing in human gardens. It tickled her toes as she walked along, lost in thought, when suddenly she heard a loud bang.

She looked up just in time, to see a bright red something whoosh past her.

She looked around her, terrified, not quite sure what had happened. She heard laughter, eerily near.

‘Humans!’ thought Sky, scared. She had to hide!

She looked around frantically. There were no trees in sight. What sort of a garden was this? Where was she to hide? Just then, she spotted a big black boulder, almost 3 times as big as herself. It looked oddly smooth for a rock this size. Pondering this, Sky ran over to it and crouched in its shadow. She looked around to see if she could spot the humans. They didn’t seem to be anywhere about. She heaved a sigh of relief. She was just about to creep out and fly off home when, she heard a voice.

‘What’s the matter Tony?’

Sky cowered, the voices sounded awfully close.

‘I thought I saw something run behind the number 8 ball,’ same the voice of another man that Sky assumed was Tony.

The first man laughed, ‘You need some sleep, mate.’

Sky was scared. She looked around. The fence was only a few feet away. Once over it, she will be able to fly the rest of the way home without being seen.

With a careful look to make sure the humans were nowhere about, Sky made a run for it. She had almost reached the fence when she saw something that stopped her dead in her tracks. A human’s face loomed over the wall and he was looking straight at her! Sky could see the confusion etched in his face as he tried to make sense of what he was looking at.

Well, she certainly wasn’t going to hang around until he figured that out, specially since he had a stick in hand that was almost as tall as himself. It was now or never.

She unfurled her wings, made sure she still had her basket of flowers and took off. Up, up and up she flew, trying to gain as much height as she possibly could.

After a few minutes, she decided it was safe to to look down. The garden, from this height, looked as big as a postage stamp. The two humans were standing on either side of it, sticks in hand, looking down upon it.

Sky was confused. This didn’t seem right. Why would the humans be bigger than the garden itself? She could see more of those big, round, smooth rocks scattered around. One of the humans bent over the garden, pointing his stick at a white rock. He hit it and it rolled over and hit another rock which bounced off of the garden wall.

Even more confused, Sky hung in mid-air watching, when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She spun around to find her friend Silky, hovering next to her, gently rising up and down in time with the beating of her wings.

‘Where have you been Sky?’asked Silky. ‘All of FaerieRealm is out looking for you.’

I stopped to take a look at that garden,’ said Sky, pointing at the green patch below her.

Silky started laughing.

‘That’s not a garden, you silly goose. It’s a pool table. Its a game that humans play.’

Sky watched Silky rolling around in mid-air, clutching her stomach as she laughed. Everything suddenly started to make sense. The big round rocks, the humans being larger than the garden, the neatly cut grass.

Sky started to laugh too. How could she have been so silly? Chortling, she and Silky flew off in the direction of FaerieRealm.